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IV

THE INNER WAYS

Loyse had forgotten her new trappings and that Hunold might see in her another male come to spoil his sport. He had whipped out his dart gun, although she had sword in hand, his move being against age-old custom. But his aim wavered ever so slightly between the invader and the woman on the bed, who, in spite of her bound hands, was wriggling her way toward him across the rumpled covers.
Moved by instinct more than plan, Loyse seized upon the outer robe he had discarded and tossed it at him, thus perhaps saving her life. For the thick cloth folds deflected his aim and the dart quivered in the bed post and not in her breast.
With a spate of oaths Hunold kicked at the tangle of cloth and swung upon the woman. She made no move to escape. Rather now she stood facing him with an odd calm. Her lips parted and an oval object dropped from between them, to swing on a short length of chain still gripped in her teeth.
The Lord Commander did not move. Instead his eyes traveled from one side to the other beneath his half-closed lids, following the slow pendulous passage of that dull gem.
Loyse was around the foot of the bed now, only to pause at a scene which might have been part of a nightmare. The woman edged around, and Hunold, his eyes fast on the gem at her chin level moved after her. Now her bound arms were presented to Loyse, her body formed a partial barrier between girl and man.
Hunold’s eyes went left to right, and back, then, as the jewel quieted, he stood very still. His mouth opened slackly. There were beads of moisture forming along the edge of his hair line.
That drive which had brought her there, moving her about as a playing piece in some other’s game, still held Loyse. She drew the cutting edge of the sword across the cords binding the woman’s wrists, sawing through their cruel loops, freeing flesh which was ridged and purple. And when the last bit fell away the woman’s arms dropped heavily to her sides as if they could not obey her will.
Hunold moved at last. The hand which gripped the dart gun circled, but slowly as if great pressure bent it. His skin glistened with sweat, a pendulous drop gathered upon his loose lower lip, spun a thread as it fell to his heaving chest.
His eyes were alive, fiery with hate and rising panic. Yet, still that hand continued to turn, and he could not tear his gaze away from the dull jewel. His shoulder quivered. Loyse across the few feet of space which separated them could sense the agony of his fruitless struggle. He no longer wanted to slay; he wanted only escape. But for the Lord Commander of Kars there was no escape.
The end of that barrel touched the soft, unweathered white of his upper breast where his throat met the arch of his chest. He was moaning, very faintly, as might a trapped animal, before the trigger clicked.
Coughing out a spume of blood, released from the vise of will which had forced him to his death, Hunold staggered forward. The woman slipped lithely aside, pushing Loyse with her. He fell up against the bed and collapsed half upon it, his head and shoulders down, his knees upon the floor as one might kneel in petition, as his hands tore spasmodically at the covers.
For the first time the woman looked directly at Loyse. She made an effort to raise one of those puffed and horribly swollen hands to her mouth, perhaps to hold the stone. And when she could not, she sucked the jewel back between her lips, nodding imperatively at the opening in the wall.
Loyse was no longer so assured. All of her life she had heard of the magic of Estcarp. But those had been tales of far-off things which did not demand full belief from the listener. The disappearance of the fleet along the reef the night before had been described to her by Bettris while she had been dressing for her bridal. But she had been so absorbed by her plans and fears at that moment that she had dismissed it all as a piece of great exaggeration.
What she had seen here was something which transcended all her ideas and she shrank from contact with the witch, stumbling ahead into the cavity of the ways, only wishing that she could or dared shut the other out with a safe wall between them. But the woman came readily after her with an agility which argued that she still had reserves of energy in spite of the rough handling she had known.
Loyse had no desire to linger with Hunold’s body. Nor was she sure that Fulk, cheated of his sport, might not burst in at any moment. But she snapped shut the hidden panel with the greatest reluctance. And shivered throughout her body as the other pawed at her with one of those useless hands for a guide. She looped her fingers in the belt which still held the witch’s ripped clothing to her body and drew her along.
They headed for her own chamber. There was so little time left. If Fulk followed the Lord Commander—if Hunold’s body servant chanced into that room—or if for some reason her father should seek her out—! She must be out of Verlaine before dawn, witch or no witch! And setting her mind firm upon that, she towed the stranger along the dark ways.
Only, when she stood once more in the light, Loyse could not be as callous as her sense of urgency dictated. She found soft cloth to wash and bind the raw grooves cut in the other’s wrists. And from her stores of clothing offered a selection to the other.
At last the witch mastered her body to the point where she was able to cup her hands beneath her pointed chin. She allowed the jewel to fall from her lips into that hold. Manifestly she did not want Loyse to touch it, nor would the girl have done so for less than her freedom.
“This about my neck please.” For the first time the other spoke.
Loyse caught the jewel’s chain, pulled open the catch and fastened it again beneath the ragged ends of hair which must have been cut as hastily and as inexpertly as her own—and perhaps for the same reason.
“Thank you, lady of Verlaine. And now, if you please,” her voice was husky as if it rasped through a dry throat, “a drink of water.”
Loyse held the cup to the other’s mouth. “Thanks from you to me are hardly necessary,” she returned with what boldness she could muster. “It would appear that you carry with you a weapon as potent as any steel!”
Over the rim of the cup the witch’s eyes were smiling. Loyse, meeting that kindliness, lost some of her awe. But she was still young, awkward, unsure of herself, sensations she resented bitterly.
“It was a weapon I could not use until you distracted the attention of my would-be bedfellow, the noble Lord Commander. For it is one I dare not risk falling into other hands, even to save my own life. Enough of that—” She lifted her hands, examined the bandages about her wrists. Then she surveyed the disordered room, noting the shawl on the floor with its burden of sheared hair, the saddle bags on the coffer.
“It is not to your mind to travel to your bridegroom, my lady duchess?”
Perhaps it was the tone of her voice, perhaps it was her power compelling something within Loyse. But she answered directly with the truth.
“I am no duchess in Karsten, lady. Oh, they said the words over me this morning before Yvian’s lords, and afterwards they paid me homage on their knees.” She smiled faintly remembering what an ordeal that had been for Siric. “Yvian was none of my choosing. I welcome this wedding only to cover my escape.”
“Yet you came to my aid,” the other prompted, watching her with those great, dark eyes which measured until Loyse smarted under their gaze.
“Because I could not do otherwise!” she flared. “Something bound me here. Your sorcery, lady?”
“In a way, in a way. I appealed in my fashion to any within these walls who had the ability to hear me. It would appear that we share more than a common danger, lady of Verlaine, or,” she smiled openly now, “seeing that you have changed your guise for this outfaring, lord of Verlaine.”
“Call me Briant, a mercenary of blank shield,” Loyse supplied, having prepared for that days ago.
“And where do you go, Briant? To seek employment in Kars? Or in the north? There will be a demand for blank shields in the north.”
“Estcarp wars?”
“Say rather that war is carried to her. But that is another matter.” She stood up. “One which can be discussed at length once we are without these walls. For I am sure you know a road out.”
Loyse draped the saddle bags across her shoulder, drew the hood of her cloak over her uncrested helm. As she moved to turn off the light globes, the witch jerked at the shawl on the floor. Vexed at her own forgetfulness, the girl caught it and threw the strands of hair into the dying fire.
“That is well done,” the other commanded. “Leave nothing which could be used to draw you back—hair has power.” She glanced to the middle window.
“Does that give on the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Then lay a false trail, Briant. Let Loyse of Verlaine , die to cover it!”
It was the work of a moment to throw open that casement, to drop her fine bride robe just below. But it was the witch who bade her fasten a scrap of undergarment to the rough edge of the stone sill.
“With such an open door to face them,” she commanded,”I do not think they will seek too assiduously for other ways out of this chamber.”
Back they went through the mirror door, and now their path led down through the dark where Loyse urged that they hug the wall to the right and take the descent slowly. Under their hands that wall grew moist, and dank smells of the sea, tainted with an ancient rottenness, were thick in the air. Down and down, and now the murmur of the waves came faintly thrumming through the wall. Loyse counted step after step.
“Here! Now there is the passage leading to the strange place.”
“The strange place?”
“Yes, I do not like to linger there, but we shall have little choice. We must wait for the dawn light to guide us out.”
She crept on, fighting the building reluctance within her. Three times had she come that way in the past, and each time she had carried on this silent warfare with her own body as the field of battle. Again she knew that rise of brooding apprehension, that threat out of the dark promising more and worse than just bodily harm. But still she shuffled on, her fingers hooked in her companion’s belt, drawing her also.
Out of the blackness Loyse heard the heavy breathing, a catch of breath. And then the other spoke, in a faint whisper, as if there crouched near that which might overhear her words.
“This is a Place of Power.”
“It is a strange place,” Loyse repeated stubbornly. “I do not like it, but it holds our gate out of Verlaine.”
Though they could not see, they sensed they had come out of the passage into a wider area. Loyse caught a glimpse of a bright point of light overhead—the beacon of a star hung far above some rock crevice.
But now there was another faint gleam which brightened suddenly, as if some muffling curtain had been withdrawn. It moved through the air well above ground level—a round gray spot. Loyse heard a sing-song chant, words she did not know. And that sound reverbrated in the curiously charged air of the space. As the light grew stronger she knew that it came from the witch’s jewel.
Her skin tingled, the air about them was charged with energy. Loyse knew an avid hunger—for what she could not have told. In her other visits to this place, the girl had been afraid and had made herself linger to control that fear. Now she left fear behind, this new sensation was one she could not put name to.
The witch, revealed in the light of the gem on her breast, was swaying from side to side, her face set and rapt. The stream of words still poured from her lips—petition, argument, protective incantation—Loyse could not have said which. Only the girl knew that they were both caught up in a vast wave of some energizing substance drawn from the sand and rock under their feet, from the walls about them, something which had remained asleep through long centuries to come instantly awake and aware now.
Why? What? Slowly Loyse made a complete turn, staring out into the gloom she could not pierce by eyepower. What lurked just beyond the faint pool of light the jewel granted them?
“We must go!” That came urgently from the witch. Her dark eyes were widely open, her hand moved clumsily to Loyse. “I cannot control forces greater than my own! This place is old, also it is apart from human kind and from the powers we know. Gods were worshiped here once, such gods as altars have not been raised to these thousand years. And there is a residue of their old magic rising! Where is your outer gate? We must try it while yet we can.”
“The light of your jewel—” Loyse shut her own eyes, pulling forth her memory of this place, as earlier she had used her memory of the other wall-hidden ways. “There,” she opened them again and pointed ahead.
Step by step the witch moved in that direction and the light went with and around her as Loyse had hoped. Steps wide and roughly hewn, rounded by ages of time, loomed to their right. They led, Loyse knew, to a flat block with certain sinister grooves which lay directly under a break in the roof, so that at intervals light from the sun, or from the moon, bathed it in gold or silver.
Around that platform fashioned of broad steps, they crept on to the far wall. The light of the jewel caught the fall of earth which lay below Loyse’s gate. It would be risky to climb that tumble of stone and clay in this gloom, but she was impressed by the urgency of the witch.
The climb was as great a task as Loyse had feared. Though her companion made no complaint, she knew that to use those swollen hands must be torment. When and where she could the girl pushed and pulled the other, tensing together when the rubble shifted under their feet, threatening to plunge them both to the bottom once again. Then they were out, lying on coarse grass with the salt air about them, and a grayish glimmer in the sky telling them that the night was almost gone.
“Sea or land?” asked the witch. “Do you seek a boat along the shore, or do we trust to our two feet and head into the hills?”
Loyse sat up. “Neither,” she replied crisply. “This lies at the end of the pastures between the hold and the sea. At this season the extra mounts are turned loose to range here until they are needed. And in a hut near the gate is the horse gear of the rangers. But that may be under guard.”
The witch laughed. “One guard? Little enough to stand between two determined women and their desire this night, or rather this morning. Show me this hut with the horse gear and I shall make you free of it with no man the wiser thereafter.”
They went across the end of the pasture. The horses, Loyse knew, would be close to the hut, where block salt had been set out two days before the storm. The jewel had gone dead when they had emerged from the cavern and they had to pick their way carefully.
A lantern burned over the door of the hut and Loyse saw horses moving back and forth. The heavy war chargers bred to carry an armored man in battle did not interest her. But there were the rough coated, smaller mounts kept for hunting in the hills, able to withstand hardship and keep going far past the exhaustion point of the costlier animals Fulk fancied for his own riding.
Out into the circle of the lantern light moved two such ponies—almost as if her thought had called them. They seemed uneasy, tossing their heads until their ragged manes flopped on their necks, but they came. Loyse put down the saddle bags, whistling softly. To her delight the small horses came on, snuffling to one another, their forelocks looping over their eyes, with shaggy patches of their winter coats making them look dappled in the dim light.
If they would only prove tractable once she had the gear! She circled about them slowly and approached the hut. There was no sign of the guard. Could he have deserted his post for the feasting? It would be his death if Fulk discovered it.
Loyse pushed inward on the door and it creaked.
Then she was peering into a place which smelt of horses and oiled leather, yes, and of the strong drink the village people brewed of honey and herbs, which was enough to make even Fulk blink into sleep at the third tankard. A jug rolled on its side, away from the touch of her boot, and sticky stuff dribbled sluggishly from its mouth. The guardian of the pastures lay on a truss of straw snoring lustily.
Two bridles, two of the riding pads used by hunters and swift riding messengers. They were easy to lift from pegs and ledge. Then she was back in the field and the door pulled to behind her.
The horses remained docile as she bridled them and slapped on the pads, cinching them as tightly as she could. But when both women were mounted and on the upper trail which was the only way out of Verlaine, her companion asked for the second time:
“Where do you ride, blank shield?”
“The mountains.” Most of Loyse’s concrete plans had dealt only with the mechanics of her escape from Verlaine. Beyond this point where she now rode, equipped, mounted, she had foreseen little. To be free and out of Verlaine had seemed so impossible a happening, so difficult an achievement that she had bent all her wits to the solving of that, with little thought of what would happen after she gained the mountain trails.
“You say Estcarp wars?” She had never really thought of venturing through the wild band of outlaw territory between Verlaine and the southern border of Estcarp, but with one of the witches of that land as a riding companion it might now be the best choice of all.
“Yes, Estcarp wars, blank shield. But have you thought of Kars, lady duchess? Would you look upon your realm in secret and see what manner of a future you have tossed away?”
Loyse, startled, almost kneed her mount into a trot unsafe for the way they threaded.
“Kars?” she repeated blankly.
Something in that worked in her mind. Yes, she had no mind to be Yvian’s lady duchess. But on the other hand Kars was the center of the southern lands and she might find a kinsman or two there if she needed help later. In so large a city a blank shield with money in his purse could lose himself. And should Fulk manage to discover something of her trail he would not think to search for her in Kars.
“Estcarp must wait yet awhile,” the other was saying. “Trouble stirs through the land. And I would know more of it, and of those who do the stirring. Kars is a starting point.”
She had been managed; Loyse knew that, but there was no feeling of outrage in her. It was rather that she had at long last found the end of a tangled cord, one which, if she dared to follow it through all its coils, would bring her where she had always wanted to be.
“We shall ride to Kars,” she consented quietly.

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IV

THE INNER WAYS

Loyse had forgotten her new trappings and that Hunold might see in her another male come to spoil his sport. He had whipped out his dart gun, although she had sword in hand, his move being against age-old custom. But his aim wavered ever so slightly between the invader and the woman on the bed, who, in spite of her bound hands, was wriggling her way toward him across the rumpled covers.
Moved by instinct more than plan, Loyse seized upon the outer robe he had discarded and tossed it at him, thus perhaps saving her life. For the thick cloth folds deflected his aim and the dart quivered in the bed post and not in her breast.
With a spate of oaths Hunold kicked at the tangle of cloth and swung upon the woman. She made no move to escape. Rather now she stood facing him with an odd calm. Her lips parted and an oval object dropped from between them, to swing on a short length of chain still gripped in her teeth.
The Lord Commander did not move. Instead his eyes traveled from one side to the other beneath his half-closed lids, following the slow pendulous passage of that dull gem.
Loyse was around the foot of the bed now, only to pause at a scene which might have been part of a nightmare. The woman edged around, and Hunold, his eyes fast on the gem at her chin level moved after her. Now her bound arms were presented to Loyse, her body formed a partial barrier between girl and man.
Hunold’s eyes went left to right, and back, then, as the jewel quieted, he stood very still. His mouth opened slackly. There were beads of moisture forming along the edge of his hair line.
That drive which had brought her there, moving her about as a playing piece in some other’s game, still held Loyse. She drew the cutting edge of the sword across the cords binding the woman’s wrists, sawing through their cruel loops, freeing flesh which was ridged and purple. And when the last bit fell away the woman’s arms dropped heavily to her sides as if they could not obey her will.
Hunold moved at last. The hand which gripped the dart gun circled, but slowly as if great pressure bent it. His skin glistened with sweat, a pendulous drop gathered upon his loose lower lip, spun a thread as it fell to his heaving chest.
His eyes were alive, fiery with hate and rising panic. Yet, still that hand continued to turn, and he could not tear his gaze away from the dull jewel. His shoulder quivered. Loyse across the few feet of space which separated them could sense the agony of his fruitless struggle. He no longer wanted to slay; he wanted only escape. But for the Lord Commander of Kars there was no escape.
The end of that barrel touched the soft, unweathered white of his upper breast where his throat met the arch of his chest. He was moaning, very faintly, as might a trapped animal, before the trigger clicked.
Coughing out a spume of blood, released from the vise of will which had forced him to his death, Hunold staggered forward. The woman slipped lithely aside, pushing Loyse with her. He fell up against the bed and collapsed half upon it, his head and shoulders down, his knees upon the floor as one might kneel in petition, as his hands tore spasmodically at the covers.
For the first time the woman looked directly at Loyse. She made an effort to raise one of those puffed and horribly swollen hands to her mouth, perhaps to hold the stone. And when she could not, she sucked the jewel back between her lips, nodding imperatively at the opening in the wall.
Loyse was no longer so assured. All of her life she had heard of the magic of Estcarp. But those had been tales of far-off things which did not demand full belief from the listener. The disappearance of the fleet along the reef the night before had been described to her by Bettris while she had been dressing for her bridal. But she had been so absorbed by her plans and fears at that moment that she had dismissed it all as a piece of great exaggeration.
What she had seen here was something which transcended all her ideas and she shrank from contact with the witch, stumbling ahead into the cavity of the ways, only wishing that she could or dared shut the other out with a safe wall between them. But the woman came readily after her with an agility which argued that she still had reserves of energy in spite of the rough handling she had known.
Loyse had no desire to linger with Hunold’s body. Nor was she sure that Fulk, cheated of his sport, might not burst in at any moment. But she snapped shut the hidden panel with the greatest reluctance. And shivered throughout her body as the other pawed at her with one of those useless hands for a guide. She looped her fingers in the belt which still held the witch’s ripped clothing to her body and drew her along.
They headed for her own chamber. There was so little time left. If Fulk followed the Lord Commander—if Hunold’s body servant chanced into that room—or if for some reason her father should seek her out—! She must be out of Verlaine before dawn, witch or no witch! And setting her mind firm upon that, she towed the stranger along the dark ways.
Only, when she stood once more in the light, Loyse could not be as callous as her sense of urgency dictated. She found soft cloth to wash and bind the raw grooves cut in the other’s wrists. And from her stores of clothing offered a selection to the other.
At last the witch mastered her body to the point where she was able to cup her hands beneath her pointed chin. She allowed the jewel to fall from her lips into that hold. Manifestly she did not want Loyse to touch it, nor would the girl have done so for less than her freedom.
“This about my neck please.” For the first time the other spoke.
Loyse caught the jewel’s chain, pulled open the catch and fastened it again beneath the ragged ends of hair which must have been cut as hastily and as inexpertly as her own—and perhaps for the same reason.
“Thank you, lady of Verlaine. And now, if you please,” her voice was husky as if it rasped through a dry throat, “a drink of water.”
Loyse held the cup to the other’s mouth. “Thanks from you to me are hardly necessary,” she returned with what boldness she could muster. “It would appear that you carry with you a weapon as potent as any steel!”
Over the rim of the cup the witch’s eyes were smiling. Loyse, meeting that kindliness, lost some of her awe. But she was still young, awkward, unsure of herself, sensations she resented bitterly.
“It was a weapon I could not use until you distracted the attention of my would-be bedfellow, the noble Lord Commander. For it is one I dare not risk falling into other hands, even to save my own life. Enough of that—” She lifted her hands, examined the bandages about her wrists. Then she surveyed the disordered room, noting the shawl on the floor with its burden of sheared hair, the saddle bags on the coffer.
“It is not to your mind to travel to your bridegroom, my lady duchess?”
Perhaps it was the tone of her voice, perhaps it was her power compelling something within Loyse. But she answered directly with the truth.
“I am no duchess in Karsten, lady. Oh, they said the words over me this morning before Yvian’s lords, and afterwards they paid me homage on their knees.” She smiled faintly remembering what an ordeal that had been for Siric. “Yvian was none of my choosing. I welcome this wedding only to cover my escape.”
“Yet you came to my aid,” the other prompted, watching her with those great, dark eyes which measured until Loyse smarted under their gaze.
“Because I could not do otherwise!” she flared. “Something bound me here. Your sorcery, lady?”
“In a way, in a way. I appealed in my fashion to any within these walls who had the ability to hear me. It would appear that we share more than a common danger, lady of Verlaine, or,” she smiled openly now, “seeing that you have changed your guise for this outfaring, lord of Verlaine.”
“Call me Briant, a mercenary of blank shield,” Loyse supplied, having prepared for that days ago.
“And where do you go, Briant? To seek employment in Kars? Or in the north? There will be a demand for blank shields in the north.”
“Estcarp wars?”
“Say rather that war is carried to her. But that is another matter.” She stood up. “One which can be discussed at length once we are without these walls. For I am sure you know a road out.”
Loyse draped the saddle bags across her shoulder, drew the hood of her cloak over her uncrested helm. As she moved to turn off the light globes, the witch jerked at the shawl on the floor. Vexed at her own forgetfulness, the girl caught it and threw the strands of hair into the dying fire.
“That is well done,” the other commanded. “Leave nothing which could be used to draw you back—hair has power.” She glanced to the middle window.
“Does that give on the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Then lay a false trail, Briant. Let Loyse of Verlaine , die to cover it!”
It was the work of a moment to throw open that casement, to drop her fine bride robe just below. But it was the witch who bade her fasten a scrap of undergarment to the rough edge of the stone sill.
“With such an open door to face them,” she commanded,”I do not think they will seek too assiduously for other ways out of this chamber.”
Back they went through the mirror door, and now their path led down through the dark where Loyse urged that they hug the wall to the right and take the descent slowly. Under their hands that wall grew moist, and dank smells of the sea, tainted with an ancient rottenness, were thick in the air. Down and down, and now the murmur of the waves came faintly thrumming through the wall. Loyse counted step after step.
“Here! Now there is the passage leading to the strange place.”
“The strange place?”
“Yes, I do not like to linger there, but we shall have little choice. We must wait for the dawn light to guide us out.”
She crept on, fighting the building reluctance within her. Three times had she come that way in the past, and each time she had carried on this silent warfare with her own body as the field of battle. Again she knew that rise of brooding apprehension, that threat out of the dark promising more and worse than just bodily harm. But still she shuffled on, her fingers hooked in her companion’s belt, drawing her also.
Out of the blackness Loyse heard the heavy breathing, a catch of breath. And then the other spoke, in a faint whisper, as if there crouched near that which might overhear her words.
“This is a Place of Power.”
“It is a strange place,” Loyse repeated stubbornly. “I do not like it, but it holds our gate out of Verlaine.”
Though they could not see, they sensed they had come out of the passage into a wider area. Loyse caught a glimpse of a bright point of light overhead—the beacon of a star hung far above some rock crevice.
But now there was another faint gleam which brightened suddenly, as if some muffling curtain had been withdrawn. It moved through the air well above ground level—a round gray spot. Loyse heard a sing-song chant, words she did not know. And that sound reverbrated in the curiously charged air of the space. As the light grew stronger she knew that it came from the witch’s jewel.
Her skin tingled, the air about them was charged with energy. Loyse knew an avid hunger—for what she could not have told. In her other visits to this place, the girl had been afraid and had made herself linger to control that fear. Now she left fear behind, this new sensation was one she could not put name to.
The witch, revealed in the light of the gem on her breast, was swaying from side to side, her face set and rapt. The stream of words still poured from her lips—petition, argument, protective incantation—Loyse could not have said which. Only the girl knew that they were both caught up in a vast wave of some energizing substance drawn from the sand and rock under their feet, from the walls about them, something which had remained asleep through long centuries to come instantly awake and aware now.
Why? What? Slowly Loyse made a complete turn, staring out into the gloom she could not pierce by eyepower. What lurked just beyond the faint pool of light the jewel granted them?
“We must go!” That came urgently from the witch. Her dark eyes were widely open, her hand moved clumsily to Loyse. “I cannot control forces greater than my own! This place is old, also it is apart from human kind and from the powers we know. Gods were worshiped here once, such gods as altars have not been raised to these thousand years. And there is a residue of their old magic rising! Where is your outer gate? We must try it while yet we can.”
“The light of your jewel—” Loyse shut her own eyes, pulling forth her memory of this place, as earlier she had used her memory of the other wall-hidden ways. “There,” she opened them again and pointed ahead.
Step by step the witch moved in that direction and the light went with and around her as Loyse had hoped. Steps wide and roughly hewn, rounded by ages of time, loomed to their right. They led, Loyse knew, to a flat block with certain sinister grooves which lay directly under a break in the roof, so that at intervals light from the sun, or from the moon, bathed it in gold or silver.
Around that platform fashioned of broad steps, they crept on to the far wall. The light of the jewel caught the fall of earth which lay below Loyse’s gate. It would be risky to climb that tumble of stone and clay in this gloom, but she was impressed by the urgency of the witch.
The climb was as great a task as Loyse had feared. Though her companion made no complaint, she knew that to use those swollen hands must be torment. When and where she could the girl pushed and pulled the other, tensing together when the rubble shifted under their feet, threatening to plunge them both to the bottom once again. Then they were out, lying on coarse grass with the salt air about them, and a grayish glimmer in the sky telling them that the night was almost gone.
“Sea or land?” asked the witch. “Do you seek a boat along the shore, or do we trust to our two feet and head into the hills?”
Loyse sat up. “Neither,” she replied crisply. “This lies at the end of the pastures between the hold and the sea. At this season the extra mounts are turned loose to range here until they are needed. And in a hut near the gate is the horse gear of the rangers. But that may be under guard.”
The witch laughed. “One guard? Little enough to stand between two determined women and their desire this night, or rather this morning. Show me this hut with the horse gear and I shall make you free of it with no man the wiser thereafter.”
They went across the end of the pasture. The horses, Loyse knew, would be close to the hut, where block salt had been set out two days before the storm. The jewel had gone dead when they had emerged from the cavern and they had to pick their way carefully.
A lantern burned over the door of the hut and Loyse saw horses moving back and forth. The heavy war chargers bred to carry an armored man in battle did not interest her. But there were the rough coated, smaller mounts kept for hunting in the hills, able to withstand hardship and keep going far past the exhaustion point of the costlier animals Fulk fancied for his own riding.
Out into the circle of the lantern light moved two such ponies—almost as if her thought had called them. They seemed uneasy, tossing their heads until their ragged manes flopped on their necks, but they came. Loyse put down the saddle bags, whistling softly. To her delight the small horses came on, snuffling to one another, their forelocks looping over their eyes, with shaggy patches of their winter coats making them look dappled in the dim light.
If they would only prove tractable once she had the gear! She circled about them slowly and approached the hut. There was no sign of the guard. Could he have deserted his post for the feasting? It would be his death if Fulk discovered it.
Loyse pushed inward on the door and it creaked.
Then she was peering into a place which smelt of horses and oiled leather, yes, and of the strong drink the village people brewed of honey and herbs, which was enough to make even Fulk blink into sleep at the third tankard. A jug rolled on its side, away from the touch of her boot, and sticky stuff dribbled sluggishly from its mouth. The guardian of the pastures lay on a truss of straw snoring lustily.
Two bridles, two of the riding pads used by hunters and swift riding messengers. They were easy to lift from pegs and ledge. Then she was back in the field and the door pulled to behind her.
The horses remained docile as she bridled them and slapped on the pads, cinching them as tightly as she could. But when both women were mounted and on the upper trail which was the only way out of Verlaine, her companion asked for the second time:
“Where do you ride, blank shield?”
“The mountains.” Most of Loyse’s concrete plans had dealt only with the mechanics of her escape from Verlaine. Beyond this point where she now rode, equipped, mounted, she had foreseen little. To be free and out of Verlaine had seemed so impossible a happening, so difficult an achievement that she had bent all her wits to the solving of that, with little thought of what would happen after she gained the mountain trails.
“You say Estcarp wars?” She had never really thought of venturing through the wild band of outlaw territory between Verlaine and the southern border of Estcarp, but with one of the witches of that land as a riding companion it might now be the best choice of all.
“Yes, Estcarp wars, blank shield. But have you thought of Kars, lady duchess? Would you look upon your realm in secret and see what manner of a future you have tossed away?”
Loyse, startled, almost kneed her mount into a trot unsafe for the way they threaded.
“Kars?” she repeated blankly.
Something in that worked in her mind. Yes, she had no mind to be Yvian’s lady duchess. But on the other hand Kars was the center of the southern lands and she might find a kinsman or two there if she needed help later. In so large a city a blank shield with money in his purse could lose himself. And should Fulk manage to discover something of her trail he would not think to search for her in Kars.
“Estcarp must wait yet awhile,” the other was saying. “Trouble stirs through the land. And I would know more of it, and of those who do the stirring. Kars is a starting point.”
She had been managed; Loyse knew that, but there was no feeling of outrage in her. It was rather that she had at long last found the end of a tangled cord, one which, if she dared to follow it through all its coils, would bring her where she had always wanted to be.
“We shall ride to Kars,” she consented quietly.

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